


the detour

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [31]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Intrigue, Knockturn Alley, Pineapple Man - Freeform, Portkeys, thermodynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: The adventure around the world is over at last. Queenie and Jacob are home in Diagon Alley, and it seems that all is well, at least for a while. Queenie gets out of the bakery one afternoon to let Jacob work on a new baked creation...and in the process stumbles straight into the clutches of the greatest dark wizard of the age.Grindelwald has no idea who he's up against.





	the detour

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everybody! First Accidental Epic story of 2018…and a doozy, to be honest. This is wall-to-wall plot. 
> 
> Prepare yourselves.

They’ve been back to Diagon Alley a little more than a week, returned from an adventure halfway around the world, when there’s an alarming turn of events.

It’s a fairly slow day at the bakery. April is a slow business time indeed; there’s little enough to do. Jacob is in the back, experimenting again. He’s working on mille-feuille, what Queenie would call a Napoleon and everyone else around here calls a custard slice. A delicate kind of confection: three layers of delicate puff pastry, sandwiching two layers of thick vanilla custard, with the top layer spread with delicate powdered-sugar-and-milk icing with chocolate lines.

Unfortunately, he’s been working on this for three days now, and nothing is going right. The puff pastry goes wrong at every turn. The day is too humid or too hot or both and the dough is ruined. The baking temperature and the refrigerator temperature have gone wrong. Sheets have come out underbaked, overbaked, or in one memorable cast both depending on the part of the sheet. And the custard has been too thin and drippy or too thick and rubbery. If the mille-feuille makes it together, then all too often it’s been soggy or simply shattered when Jacob tries to cut it.

The only thing that doesn’t ever go wrong is the icing.

This is the fourth day of experimentation and Jacob is downright in a temper. He hadn’t quite shouted at Queenie, but his thoughts are all spiky with irritation at the pastry and the confection. And the kitchen seems like a bit of a danger zone right now. So she puts on her hat and goes out, intending to take a walk and maybe stop by to chat a bit with Daisy at Eeylops Owl Emporium.

But she’s a little bit preoccupied and lost in thought, and somehow she takes a wrong turn. It seems like she blinks and suddenly she’s not on Diagon Alley anymore. The buildings don’t tilt cozily, but loom uncomfortably overhead. The streetlights grow a little less brilliant, and the storefront windows are heavily curtained and, in some cases, barred. The cobbles haven’t been well-cleaned and the paint on the buildings is cracked and peeling. It’s an eerie atmosphere, very dark and creepy. There are thoughts here, and not particularly pleasant ones by any means. The alley is dark, a place meant for dark business.

Queenie knows exactly where she is.

“Knockturn Alley,” she whispers.

She turns around with intent to go back, but—

There’s no way back.

For a moment, she stares at the dim bricks, and then turns with determination to get out of the alley. It has to have an exit. Something magic just happened but she hasn’t got time to sit and wait to find out what. Her heels click on the cobblestones, loud in the utter silence. There are a few other people in the alley, though none speak; they range from the impressively well-dressed to the ragged and poor. But all of them share a certain look, and a certain sort of thought. Thoughts of curses, of hexes, of illegal trades and revenges. This is not a pleasant place.

Queenie keeps her head held high as she walks, trying to look as if she belongs. There’s a man ahead, lounging against the wall. His robes are a dirty gray; his hood hangs low so she can’t see his face at all. And for a second she thinks she’ll be all right. But then his thoughts turn to her.

“Don’t find many women like you in Knockturn Alley,” the man says in an accent that Queenie can’t place. _Here she is at last…_  “What’s a doll like you doing here?”

“Taking a detour,” Queenie says airily, drifting away from him a bit. But he’s put himself at a narrow point of the alley and there’s not a lot of distance.

She tries to anticipate his actions but what’s she supposed to do when he reaches out and seizes the wrist of her wand hand? Her wand goes clattering away from her. “Why don’t we keep company for a while?” he asks. _Mordred’s balls, I’m hungry…_ There’s a glint of teeth under his hood.

“Let go of me!” Queenie says loudly. But there’s no one going to help her, not in this alley. She yanks at her wrist but can’t get back. And his teeth are long, and very sharp, and—

“Let go of her!” a male voice shouts. Queenie jerks her head around to see a young man aiming his wand at her attacker. He’s younger than Ollivander, just out of Hogwarts, and still wearing a jacket in Gryffindor colors.

The man holding her wrist lets go and Queenie practically leaps back, sweeping her wand up off the cobblestones as she goes. Watching the youth warily, the man raises his hands. “Just talking.” _You…!_

“Get out or I’ll hex you,” the young man says, a steely gleam in his eye. He hurries over and offers his arm, which Queenie takes. Still holding his wand ready, the young man guides Queenie away.

“You got there just in the nick of time, sugar,” Queenie says, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. She ain’t getting much from him: he must be training to be an Auror, with Occlumency like that.

“I’m glad I was passing through. What a beastly man,” the young man says in disgust. He tips his hat with his free hand. “Stephen Parker.”

“Queenie Goldstein,” she says. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in Knockturn Alley?”

Stephen smiles. “I ought to ask the same as you,” he says. “I got lost. I’m sure you did the same.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I got really lost. Not sure how, but oh well. Got a story to tell Jacob tonight!”

The young man is about to reply when he trips over a jag in the cobblestones. Something tumbles out of his pocket—a pocket watch, bouncing across the cobblestones. “Oh, damn—!”

Queenie lets go of him and ducks down to pick up the pocket watch.

There’s a bizarre tug behind her navel and the world warps. Her head spins, colors shifting and a faint shriek like a kettle in her ears. She feels a sense of traveling, hurtling over great distance, and then it all ends at once. Queenie staggers, blinking hard, and when she looks around she’s definitely not in Knockturn Alley anymore.

It’s a well-appointed library, shelves towering above her to the high ceiling, lining the four walls except for breaks for curtained windows and for a door, old books packed onto every shelf. The ceiling is old wood, beams carved with strange shapes and unsettling figures, archaic and mystic. Floating globes overhead shed soft golden light onto the dark hardwood floors, polished to a high shine. A plush green carpet fills the center of the room, a round table on it with parchment and quills in evidence and three comfortable chairs around it. On a side table in one corner rests a glass globe filled with swirling black clouds, a small decorative bowl, and a ticking clock; in the other corner is an armchair.

Warily, Queenie takes in the empty room, holding her wand firmly. She calls to mind all the fighting spells she’s ever seen anyone cast…Graves’ Blasting Curse, Credence’s Stunning Spell, Tina’s Shield Spell, Newt’s Body-Bind. It’s not much but she knows she can’t manage more. She’s seen Newt summon flocks of birds and use them as missiles. She knows that Graves has blown down buildings, and Tina has fought five men at once, and Credence…is Credence. She can’t do any of that and she’d give her right hand to have them with her right now.

But the person she wants with her most is Jacob.

She checks the windows, first, and looks out of the curtains to see a late-afternoon sky over open, rolling hills and fields. There are plenty of trees: a pastoral setting, Queenie thinks vaguely, like the ones that they keep talking about at the Flourish and Blotts book club. This must be some kind of…country estate, then, but she’s got no idea where on earth it might be. There’s no sign of human habitation except this house, for miles around. Below the windows are well-kept hedges and a garden that sprawls out with fountains and banks of flowers and statuary, but there are no people in sight working on the grounds of the house.

The bookshelves hold no particular secrets. They’re not alphabetical, but organized by apparent subject matter. Those she can see range from the mundane, like bird-watching guides and medical texts and philosophy tracts, to the grim, like secret histories and tomes of necromancy, and darker things. The titles are esoteric, some in languages Queenie doesn’t know: _The Officer of the Eternal, Symbols of the Beginning, Daemonology, Mein Kampf, Searching for Time, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe…_

In a twist of the familiar, there is a copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ , in among the books of natural science. It’s located right beside _On the Origin of Species._ The alphabet has no place in this room, clearly. “Graves would have a conniption,” Queenie mutters under her breath, sliding the book back into its place.

She turns to the papers on the table, careful not to disturb them too much. There are beautiful, understated inkwells and an array of gorgeous quill pens—swan feathers, Queenie thinks, horribly expensive but the best possible quality. There’s sealing wax, but no signet or stamp. Among the papers, there are several bank statements and bills, none which have names that Queenie recognizes at all. A few pieces of correspondence—one in Chinese, a few in Latin, more in German—are folded in unaddressed envelopes. A few itemized lists, in German, for the most part, with English insertions, provide absolutely nothing in their banality. A notebook in Latin, clearly not quite a journal, but some kind of record, a memo book or collection of thoughts, perches close to one chair, but provides Queenie with nothing since her Latin is limited to incantations.

The most interesting thing is the stack of mathematical notes. They describe geometry, equations Queenie doesn’t know how to solve, speckled with words she recognizes as incantations. Is this spell work? She can tackle a little bit of this, given the hobby of studying No-Maj sciences that she and Credence had picked up on their trip these past few months. Mathematics are integral to magic, Queenie had discovered: with numbers, one could describe the energy of a spell, the area of its effect, and so on.

She’s not entirely sure what these spells are for; they aren’t offensive in nature, she knows that much. They’re spells of…containment, maybe? These equations might be describing an area of effect. Or no: an area of limit. And there’s something else, some effect producing lots of energy: she remembers Newt and Graves out-shouting each other about this during an impromptu thermodynamics lesson they’d had somewhere in the northern Raj, complete with demonstrative fireworks.

Queenie recognizes many of the variables. P for pressure, V for volume, T for temperature, S for entropy, mu for potential…of course most of these equations go far beyond her understanding. She can identify the points where energy is listed: always in joules, of course. This should be comprehensible and ordinary. But something’s wrong with it. There are strange variables, symbols that Queenie doesn’t know, entered into places they don’t belong. Equations that make no sense.

And a frankly impossible number, at the bottom left-hand corner of the last page, crowded in as if the writer ran out of space. _27,000,000,000,000 joules._ A number so huge it leaves Queenie’s head spinning. Twenty-seven trillion joules, so much energy that Queenie can’t wrap her mind around it. What is it _for_? What, exactly, is producing _that much_ energy? There ain’t enough in the world!

“I don’t understand,” she whispers, tracing the number with one finger. “What is this?”

Behind her, there’s a faint click as the door unlatches.

Queenie drops the papers on the table and whirls around. She levels her wand at the door, horribly aware of the fact that her only exits are out the windows and she’s three stories up. She could Apparate, but that has only limited distance. And—

The door opens and her thoughts stop in her tracks.

“A pleasure to see you again, Miss Goldstein,” Grindelwald says.

Before she thinks consciously she’s screaming out a spell and tripping over herself, falling backwards to get away from him. “ _Stupefy!”_

He blocks it easily without even drawing his wand, the energy dissipating around his hand. His strange eyes are somber, even compassionate. “I have no wish to harm you. Please, sit.”

Queenie’s back is against a bookcase. “No,” she says, proud of the fact that her voice doesn’t remotely tremble. She keeps thinking of how she can’t be scared: of the fact that no one she admires would quail under this terrifying gaze. Of how Jacob stood up to him, right out in the middle of the street in San Francisco. She can do that.

“As you wish,” Grindelwald says, shutting the door behind him. His voice is cultured, accent as English as it gets, not a hint of German anywhere despite his name and all the German writing in the documents on the table. He’s dressed downright aristocratically, the way that all the English Pure-Bloods do, like they’re lords from the medieval times. “I only wish to be courteous. You are, after all, an honored guest in my house.”

“You kidnapped me!”

He looks genuinely regretful as he stands beside the table. “A necessary deception. I’m sure you understand how foolhardy it would be for me to go to Diagon Alley and interview you in person.” As he speaks, he absently shuffles the papers into order again.

No matter how hard Queenie tries, she can’t get into his head. He must have been expecting her, really expecting that she’d be able to read him. Doesn’t make the same mistake twice, this one. “I don’t want you to interview me at all.”

“I have an offer for you,” Grindelwald says, gazing hard at her.

“I’ll say no, whatever you offer,” Queenie says. She thinks about the boldest man she knows and puts on a brave face. “So you might as well kill me right now.”

Grindelwald looks shocked. “If you refuse, no harm will come to you, I swear. Your reasons for refusal, should you choose to turn me down, would be admirable and understandable. A little misguided, perhaps, but you are someone of great loyalty and intellect. I consider you among the greatest wizards of the age. It would be dishonorable to do you harm.”

For whatever reason, she does believe what he’s saying. So he’s not going to hurt her. What’s really happening here?

“Then I guess I’ll listen,” Queenie says. She folds her arms, keeping her back to the shelf. “Not that I’ve got a choice, huh?”

Grindelwald comes slowly around the table, leaning against its edge, facing her. “Miss Goldstein, you already know that I hold you in great esteem. You’re intelligent. Loyal. Courageous. Powerful. There are not many wizards who would be willing to attempt the feats you have. I need wizards like you.”

“I’m not going to join up to kill No-Majs,” Queenie snaps. “If you ain’t noticed, I’m planning to marry one. Jacob’s a better man than you’ll ever be.”

“He may well be,” Grindelwald says. He looks past her for a moment, some kind of deep hurt in his face. And then he looks at her again. “Your character judgement is impeccable. But you must know that your Jacob is a rarity in this world. Most Muggles are cowardly, bigoted, violent. Oppressors of us all. The virtues of one man cannot wash away the sins of an entire race.”

Queenie just glares. She’s sure he’s aware of what she’s doing, battering at his mental defenses; she’s also sure he’s aware that she’s starting to make headway. No one can manage to keep up two tracks of thought forever, and his Occlumency might be good but they both know her Legilimency is better. Just now it’s only surface thoughts, banal, mundane; it’s not long until she sorts out where, exactly, they are in the world. And if she gets that, he’s in trouble. This safe house won’t be safe for long.

Still, despite her mental attack, Grindelwald looks mild and calm. One of his hands is tucked in his pocket; he gestures gracefully with the other as he speaks. Except for his abhorrent hairstyle, he’s the image of turn-of-the-century style. A man in 1899 might have wanted to look this way, and even if it’s thirty years out of fashion he looks handsome all the same. “You see, Miss Goldstein, I am not asking for you to stand on the front lines of the coming war. That would be unkind. And I am not asking you to sacrifice your future husband. That would be cruel. I am asking you…for friendship.”

“Good luck with that, sugar.”

“Perhaps that is too strong a word,” Grindelwald allows. “An alliance, then. We have a mutual interest. You and I both understand that kind of damage that the Statute of Secrecy has done, and the value of its removal. In different ways, perhaps; but such differences can be dealt with once the Statute is gone at last. Then there will be time for moral debates. The time to act is now.”

Queenie’s mind races. If he’s locked down this tight, then he can’t be listening to her. She’d know if he was, after all. So he won’t know if she does what she does best…and lies.

“Okay,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t like living in secret any more than you do. I just want to live my life with Jacob and be happy and you know that ain’t going to happen with all the laws in place. So what do you want me to do, if I say yes?”

He smiles. It’s a charming smile and if Queenie weren’t gradually slipping into his head and hearing the kinds of things he’s thinking about, ugly things, she’d _be_ charmed. “To listen and to watch,” he says. “I have friends in England, of course, but none so close to the pulse of wizarding London. You live on Diagon Alley. You see the greatest and the least of English wizards, and because of your exceptional powers you hear all of their thoughts. I wish to know the current of sentiment.”

And there it is, bobbing up to the surface of the sea of barely-restrained violence: the fragment of a thought, something he never should have brought to mind. A name. A fearsome name. Queenie nearly drops her wand again in shock.

_…Dumbledore…_

The tenor of the thought is yearning. As if she’s listening to Tina thinking of Newt. Can this be _that_ Dumbledore, the one who’s a professor at Hogwarts? Everyone who comes to the bakery around the time of the school rush thinks of him constantly, students and parents and professors alike. Queenie’s never seen the great man herself, but his reputation precedes him. He’s a liaison to the Assembly of the International Confederation of Wizards, England’s greatest wizard, compared sometimes to Merlin in terms of sheer magical might and knowledge. Prime Minister Fawley holds England’s reins, but it’s sometimes whispered that it’s Dumbledore who steers the country’s real course.

She’s supposed to watch for Dumbledore.

Queenie connects the dots in a thought’s time. She’s watching the sentiment of one man. She’s supposed to watch the current of his opinions, the ripples of his effect. If Dumbledore hints at preference for Grindelwald, if he changes his tune of staunch opposition and support of the Confederation and the Statute, then it will show through the wizarding world. And Dumbledore would be a terribly powerful ally, for a man like Grindelwald, an ally who could only be approached if he was already amicable to such a meeting.

Of course, the question has been raised before why Dumbledore hasn’t gone out and challenged Grindelwald already. Queenie doesn’t know the answer to that, but she guesses it’s the same reason that Credence and Percival haven’t taken action when they could. It ain’t fear, not exactly. It’s some sense that the time just ain’t right yet. The picture’s bigger than Grindelwald alone.

“Okay,” she says aloud. “Can’t hurt. I don’t like you and neither do any English wizards, so I can tell you right now that your ‘current of sentiment’ won’t change.”

He smiles at her. Relieved. Almost handsome. Queenie cringes inside. It makes her feel sick just to be in the same room as this man, knowing what he’s done. What he’ll do, given half a chance. “You’re a good woman, Miss Goldstein. Shall we shake on it?” He offers a hand.

“You just promise me one thing,” Queenie says as she crosses the room and takes his hand. “You leave Jacob out of this, when it’s all said and done.”

Grindelwald shakes her hand, firmly, honestly, looking her in the eye. “Your Mr. Kowalski will not be harmed,” he promises. It’d be nice if she could confirm that with Legilimency, but he’s just too damn good. He might not know she caught something, but he’s not letting her get anything now.

“Good,” Queenie says, letting go of his hand and stepping back. She feels like she’s run off a cliff and out over empty air, and the only way not to fall is to keep on running. “Now can you send me home?”

“Of course,” Grindelwald says. He gestures to the table on which the clock sits. “In the bowl is a marble. Your Portkey home.”

Queenie hates turning her back to him, but she does. The marble is simple, a cat’s-eye, like a child might play with. “If you want to kidnap me again, a warning might be nice,” she snipes.

He laughs, warm and full. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Goldstein. Good afternoon.”

She doesn’t waste any more time: Queenie snatches up the marble and instantly feels the world-spinning yank as she’s dragged across who knows how many miles of space to land firmly on the cobblestone corner of Diagon Ally and Knockturn Alley. For a moment, Queenie stands stock still, trying to sort out the screaming chaos inside her head.

First things first: she drops the marble on the ground and steps on it, hard, shattering it. Second thing, she checks her pockets, her collar, her hat, the cuffs of her sleeves—anything that could hide something they could listen through. “Finite Incantatem,” Queenie repeats over and over, tapping as much of her clothing as she can. “Finite Incantatem!” She can’t afford to be heard, to be tracked, and she’s sure that Grindelwald would have left something on her if he could.

When she’s certain she’s as safe as she can be, she takes off at a dead run for the bakery.

The bells over the door clatter as she bursts inside, passing a young wizard at the counter who looks shocked at her dishevelment but Queenie doesn’t care. Millie, at the counter, says something but Queenie doesn’t catch or care what. She bursts into the kitchen, already shouting:

“Jacob! _Jacob!”_

He’s just turning around with a sheet of puff pastry, straight out of the oven, and the pan goes down with a clang, puff pastry shattering. “Queenie! What the hell—” _What—!_

“I just met Grindelwald,” Queenie says.

Jacob’s talking, yelling really, but Queenie’s not entirely sure what he’s saying. Her vision is getting a little odd. And there’s a distinct sense of _falling_ …

She opens her eyes laying on the kitchen floor.

“Queenie, talk to me,” Jacob says. He keeps a hand on her shoulder, making her stay on the floor, lying down. _Never saw you faint before!_ “Did you hit your head?”

“I know what I saw—”

“When you fell. Did you hit your head when you fell?” _Got to slow down. She’s confused…_

She blinks a few times. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” Jacob says. He helps her sit up, and gets up to get her a glass of water. _Something bad’s happening here._ “Take it from the top. What the hell happened to you out there?”

Queenie explains the whole thing, start to finish. Knockturn Alley, Portkey, library…dark wizard. It makes her want to scream in hindsight, but she keeps it together. “…lied through my teeth to get away,” she says. “And he let me walk. I don’t know why.”

“He bought your act,” Jacob says. He gets out a broom and starts sweeping up the shattered remains of the pastry sheet. _Damn. Got to try again…bad batch anyway._ “Most guys don’t look at you and see brains, if you see what I mean. Sorry to bring that up.”

“No, it’s all right,” Queenie says with a shrug. “You’re probably right. But…why me? I ain’t exactly the best one of us!”

Jacob sweeps the crumbs into a dustpan. “Yeah, you are,” he says with a smile. It fades, though, and he looks thoughtful. _Smart kind of man…wouldn’t do something half-cocked._ “But I guess you’re the easiest target, too. Wouldn’t bother with me. Looking for Credence is downright stupid, he and Graves would just kill him. Newt and Tina might be a good angle, but if we ain’t got a clue where they are, he won’t either. You’re alone, you ain’t got many magical friends to turn to and he knows we don’t trust the Ministry. And you’re with me. I’m good leverage. If you hadn’t agreed, you could bet he’d have threatened me to make you listen.”

“Yeah,” Queenie murmurs. “Then what do we do now? I ain’t going to the Ministry with this, I feel like we’d both get locked up…”

Setting aside broom and dustpan, Jacob sits down beside her. “If he’s asking you, I bet he hasn’t got enough spies in London,” he says. _Smart but not smart enough._ “So maybe you do a little spying back.”

Queenie wonders for a moment if she didn’t actually hit her head. “Jacob!”

He smiles at her. “Like a better version of Mata Hari, right? You got twice her brains and magic besides. Ain’t a person in the world who could do better.” _No one better._

She doesn’t buy it, honestly. “I can’t go up against Grindelwald!”

“He didn’t know what you were doing,” Jacob says. _Idiot._ “Underestimated you. And maybe we don’t get anything important…but you can maybe keep him from looking too hard at England. He’s got us by the short hairs. You turn around now and say no, he comes looking for you, and we know he can get to you even in Diagon Alley. Then we’re both in trouble. You give him exactly what he wants, the rest of the world is in trouble. We go to the Ministry, we maybe get all of us in trouble. You play him for a fool…”

“You really think I can pull off something like that?” Queenie asks, staring at Jacob. Her hands are trembling and to hide it she folds them in her lap. “I ain’t that good.”

“You got to be,” Jacob says simply. _You got to be._

For a long moment, they sit in silence. The kitchen floor is cold; on the counter, the sheet pan pops a little as it begins to cool. Out in the bakery Queenie hears indistinct conversation. Nobody knows what’s happening back here.

At last she looks at Jacob. She can’t quite keep the shake out of her voice. “We should tell everyone else. They should know…”

“Not by letter,” Jacob says. He stares at the oven door. _Too dangerous and ain’t none of us can write in code._ “Maybe we try to get them all to London. Pass it off as a visit, have a reunion.”

“But what about Percival and Credence?”

“We’ve smuggled people around in a suitcase before,” Jacob says. He sighs. “They’ve got to know all the same.” _Can’t afford not to tell them._

Queenie shivers. She wraps her arms around herself. “I still don’t know.”

Jacob puts an arm over her shoulders. “Ain’t a good choice here,” he says. _No good choices at all, except…_ “But whatever you do, you’ll be okay. You’re you.”

“You got more confidence in me than I do.”

“Hey,” Jacob says. “No need to be afraid. We’ve got each other.” _Never letting you go._

“The whole time I was there I was wishing you were too,” Queenie admits.

 _No way._ “Could have wished for Graves.”

She shakes her head, leaning on Jacob. “Kept thinking about you standing up and doing the right thing, even when it gets bad. Made me feel brave.”

He laughs, disbelieving. “Well, if it works.” _Only girl in the world…_ He kisses the top of her head. “I think we’ll be okay. Just got to make sure you know what you’re telling old Grindelwald, keep your story straight so he doesn’t work it out.”

“I’ll leave that to you,” Queenie says. “I ain’t so good at playing the long con.”

Jacob hums thoughtfully. “Did he say when he’d write?” _Should start our planning now._

“Just that he’d be in touch.”

 _Nobody likes him around here. Right?_ “So we got time,” Jacob says. “Better figure out the truth first, and then how much we want to tell him. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Queenie says. She bites her lip. “I’m really glad we’re in this together.”

“So am I, kitten,” Jacob says. _So am I._

Queenie thinks about it, while they sit on the kitchen floor. It might be hours or it might be months before Grindelwald comes calling, but when he does she’d better be ready. She has to know things. Be better than she’s ever been before.

Well, she might not believe she can do anything. But Jacob believes in her, and she believes in him. So…she can be confident in that, at least.

“Right,” she says, climbing to her feet and straightening her dress.

Jacob hops up and looks her in the eye. “Ready?” _Time to get to work._

She smiles, a little tremulous. “Queenie Goldstein, double agent, reporting for duty.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Pyxyl and ghosttheconfusedhuman for their help with the baking! Sat me down, talked me through it all, and made me watch the Great British Bakeoff for better understanding. I owe you both!
> 
> Puff pastry is HARD: Mary Berry herself _buys store-bought puff pastry_ because WHY would you make your own??? Unless you’re Jacob Kowalski, and have many an opinion on homemade pastries.
> 
>  _Mein Kampf_ was published in 1925.
> 
> All guesses on what, exactly, “twenty-seven trillion joules” is all about may be referred to the comments. I can’t promise that I’ll answer anything at all. But I will say this: everything you need to unravel what’s happening here is in the room with Queenie…


End file.
